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Episode 507: Besieged
Besieged is the seventh episode of the fifth season. Notes *Clients: Jacob (The man who posed as Michael/person of interest), Denise O'Lear (The client) *Bad Guys: John O'Lear (Angry father), Zecariah (Extremist nutbag in charge) Cast Main * Michael Westen * Sam Axe * Fiona Glenanne * Madeline Westen * Jesse Porter Recurring Synopsis Michael and Sam try to rescue an ailing boy from his father (Jay R. Ferguson), who took the boy to a heavily armed compound. Elsewhere, Fiona and Jesse keep an eye on a day laborer Jacob Stark, who could be tied to Max's fate. After finding out Stark is innocent, the team also finds out that a bomb was placed in Stark's yacht, and Michael resolves to finding the bomb maker. Spy Facts In any surveillance operation, you have to resist the impulse to grab your target and interrogate him immediately. It may be tempting, particularly when your target was, say, involved in framing you for a murder. Of course, just because it's the right way to do things, doesn't make it fun. As a spy, a lot of missions depend on the world not knowing you were there. When an op involves saving someone's life and keeping your presence unknown, you have to make their escape look credible. So if the person you're saving is an untrained civilian, you need to make it look like they escaped like an untrained civilian. Spies deal with foreign agencies, dirty corporations, and criminal syndicates all the time. But none of them compares to dealing with families. Asking a man to take apart his business, or turn on his country is easy compared to going into a man's home and telling him how to deal with the people he loves. That's why, when confronted with a family situation, it's usually a good idea to tell the truth. There are dozens of ways to disarm a man with a gun, but unfortunately they all come with a risk that the gun will go off. No matter how good you are, it's not something you want to try with a child present. Unless you want to tell a bereaved mom that you gambled with her kid's life, because you felt lucky. You can tell a lot about a group, from looking at their base. Their fortifications can tell you whether they're focused on offense or defense, and their vehicle type and number can tell you how mobile they are. The most important thing to check-their weapons. If they're carrying M-16's on full auto, you're probably not dealing with amateurs camping in the woods. Sneaking past trained operatives waiting in ambush is usually next to impossible. They can stay alert through the long, boring hours of waiting, ready for action at any second. Amateurs, on the other hand, tend to relax, which can give you the opening you need. Coordinated covert offensives involving two teams are a lot like ballroom dancing. You have to synchronize your steps, time your moves, and always put your partner first. But unlike the tango or the two-step, it's good form to hog the limelight during covert ops. If all eyes are on you, your partner can work undetected on the sidelines. Using an untrained asset to make contact with a target is never ideal. Meeting in person would be an outright failure, so it helps to do it over the phone. That way, you can write the script for the asset, and all they have to do is read - most of the time. Tricking an enemy into letting you inside their stronghold is a strategy as old as the ancient Greeks. But you don't always need to build a large wooden horse. With a modified special purpose insertion/extraction harness, you can hitch a ride under a vehicle and go right through the front door. For as long as armies have built fortifications, others have tried to get past them. Siege warfare can involve tunneling under, scaling over, or smashing through walls. Once you're inside, though, you're dealing with an entrenched enemy defending his home. That's why the most successful sieges often don't involve attacking at all, but tricking your enemy into coming out. Full Recap Sam and Fi are staking out Jacob, the guy who posed as Michael. They're finding it tough to keep watch without moving in on the guy. Fi doesn't think Jacob is any kind of mastermind, but they have to wait and find out who he works for. Some thug-looking guys are outside Jacob's house leading to Sam and Fi having to orchestrate his escape. Sam breaks in and tells Jacob that some guys are outside who want to kill him. He sends Jacob out the back, where Fi is waiting to drive him away, while Sam puts on a baseball cap and drives Jacob's pickup truck away, leading the thugs to believe it was Jacob that got away. Michael is worried about the kidnapping of Jacob, but Fi tells him the situation. She's already told Jacob that it's in his best interest to reveal any info he has about his boss. Jacob tells Michael that he doesn't know who he's been working for. The phone the man gave him is at his house, and Jacob doesn't want to go back there. Michael has a job with Sam, so it's up to Fi. Michael meets Sam at the restaurant and Sam is drinking iced tea. He says he has to keep a clear head because it's his "lady" who needs a job done and she said she'd do "anything" if he and Michael are able to help. A woman named Denise, a work friend of Sam's lady Allison, is having custody issues with her ex-husband, who apparently has taken their son and isn't coming back. The guy's brother is an Army Ranger who was killed in action. Denise's husband changed when his brother was killed. Michael promises Denise they "just want to talk" to her ex-husband John. Michael and Sam pull up to John's house, which looks like someone spent a lot of time and money fortifying—probably because someone did. Michael decides that rather than mess with John's head, he'll tell the truth. He introduces himself as Michael, a friend of Denise's, and that he promised he'd check on their son. Michael asks to come inside, noting that neither of them wants to get the law involved. John opens the door and tells Michael to keep his hands where he can see them. Inside, Michael asks where Tommy is and John says it's none of his business while pulling out a shotgun and pointing it at Michael. Michael starts to get somewhere in trying to talk John down, as John explains that a judge in Chicago has no right to tell him what to do with his family, but Sam trips an alarm while snooping around in a shed behind the house and John freaks out again. He tells Tommy to "get the packs" and says they're going to leave. Michael doesn't want to risk disarming John with Tommy around, so he leaves the house. John speeds away. Sam thinks they're in good shape because he planted the tracker on John's car, but Michael doesn't think it's going to be that easy. John is tracked to an anti-government militia training camp, where he's taken Tommy. Denise wants to call the police, but Michael says that's not possible because it would turn violent. Denise is worried because Tommy's asthmatic and can't go too long without his inhaler. Michael takes and says that might be something he can use to get John to talk to them. He leaves and asks Maddy to keep Denise calm. Sam and Michael stake out the camp and find it's locked down tight and heavily armed. Sam notes that Zecheriah is the "E.N.I.C.," Extreme Nutbag in Charge. Michael calls John and tells him he's outside with Tommy's new inhaler. John says it might take a few hours for him to come out. Michael says he'll wait, but begins plotting his plan. He needs to get into the compound, possibly by posing as a worker who needs to replace the gas tank the compound uses for power. Jesse and Fi are back at Jacob's house. Jesse volunteers to run in to get the phone while Fi stands guard outside. Inside, the thugs are all asleep and Jesse is able to get the phone—but has to take two because he doesn't know which is Jacob's. Back at the compound, Michael gets ready to meet John while Sam prepares to use the diversion to compromise the gas tank. John comes out to the gate flanked by men with guns. Michael tells Sam he can distract John, Zecheriah and the others for 10 minutes. After Zecheriah threatens to kill Michael, he sees he has to give Sam three more minutes and makes a bit more of a scene. Michael tells John he promised Denise he'd check Tommy's vitals, but Zecheriah tells him he can't see the boy. Michael then mocks Zecheriah's army and the fact that he never served in a real army. Zecheriah doesn't take this well and makes a big speech about how he didn't serve because he doesn't take orders—he questions what he's told. He gives Michael a smack to the gut with the butt of his gun and warns him that he and his men will "shoot to kill" if they see Michael or anyone associated with him around their camp again. Jesse reports back to Denise about Michael's progress. He asks Denise for her cell phone, saying John won't take Michael's calls anymore, but might take calls from her phone. Back at the loft, Jacob is nervous about calling his boss. Fi wrote him a script about the men trying to kill him, which he reads awkwardly while leaving his boss a voicemail. His boss texts him back and tells him he'll handle it. Michael and Sam find the gas tank that's headed to the compound, and Fi is going to ride in on the Trojan Horse. Michael calls John on Denise's phone and John answers. Michael wants to make it clear for Fi to know where Tommy is being held in the camp, so he tells John that he needs to cover the windows of his space with trash bags to prevent Tommy's asthma from acting up. John says he'll do it. Fi latches onto the bottom of the gas tank truck and heads toward the camp. While Michael, Sam and Jesse wait nearby, the men come racing out of the camp and the gas tanker slows down. Michael realizes they know Fi is on board and yells at her over a radio to get off. She does. A gunfight breaks out and Michael winds up shooting at the gas tanker, exploding it and giving Fi enough cover to escape. The gang realizes that Zechariah and his men were listening to their cell phone conversations and that's how they knew Fi was on the gas tanker. Michael decides to use this to their advantage for his next move. Michael and Jesse act out a phone call in which Michael says they're going to hole up in the shed and attack the militia group. Zecheriah hears this conversation and mobilizes his men. Michael's plan is to divert the whole group and walk into the camp while they're all out. Just one guard is left when Zecheriah and his crew all head toward the shed. Michael & Co. cut through the fence and take out the guard, but Michael runs into a problem when he realizes that John stayed at the camp with Tommy. Meanwhile, Zecheriah and his men are shooting up the empty shed. Michael walks in to John's barracks and talks to John, who is freshly beat up and handcuffed to a bed where Tommy is asleep. He says he was beaten and had his leg broken when he refused to go out to the shed. Tommy passed out. Michael tells John the camp isn't a safe place for him and Tommy. Meanwhile, Zecheriah has finally gone into the shed and found there was no one inside. John wakes Tommy up and tells him to go with Michael, who brings Tommy to Denise and tells her that John got out of the compound and is checking himself into a hospital for help. He also says ATF rounded up most of the militia and Zecheriah is going to spend a lot of time in prison. Denise plans to move to Georgia. She thanks Michael for getting through to John and says it must have been hard for him because Maddy told her about Michael's dad. She says she worries about Tommy and Michael says he's going to be OK. Denise asks how he knows, and Michael replied, "He has a mom that loves him -- he'll be fine." Back at the loft, Michael tells a nervous Jacob that he'll be able to leave once Michael knows where Jacob's ex-boss wants to meet him. Jacob gets a text with the meeting time and place info and Michael sends him off. Michael goes to the meeting place, a boat in the marina. Once he's there, he finds no one and gets another text. Jacob's ex-boss wants him to take the boat to the Bahamas. Michael looks around and finds a bomb with a depth finder. Jacob was to be killed when the boat blew up after reaching a specific depth in the ocean. Michael sends the boat to sea and jumps off, wanting Jacob's boss to think he killed Jacob. Sam and Michael think they can trace who made the bomb based on a sample of the C-4 and pictures of the components. Michael needs to figure it out quickly, though, before the CIA comes after him for Max's murder. They watch the boat heading out into the water when it blows up. Trivia References Quotes *Fiona: stakeout We've been here two days, Sam. Face it, this guy is not calling the shots. He has Christmas lights hanging in July. He may look a little bit like Michael, but there is no way he's capable of killing a CIA officer and setting Michael up for it. *Sam: Yeah, well, I don't think he's capable of setting a table. Yesterday, I found a brochure about raising Alpacas for profit in his trash. *Fiona: So let's scrap this cloak and dagger and go have a little chat. I'm wearing my door-kicking Jimmy Choos. *Jesse: How many bangers we got inside? *Fiona: Three. Shouldn't be too hard for me to sneak past them. *Jesse: Hmm. Uh-huh, or, you know, I could go in and you could stay out here, because -- *Fiona: If you're about to say because I'm a woman, I'm going to knock your teeth down your throat. 507 507